The Sweetest Song

 I'm driving past this aging apartment building in the city and recalling a young man who once called that run-down place home. It was the least likely place one would ever guess a song could be born out of... but aren't some of the most impressionable things often birthed from the painful ones?          

For over thirty years, my father was a middle school band director. In both California and then Alaska, he faithfully stewarded the musical journeys of hundreds of young people, some of whom continued on with their instrument and performance years after they left his classroom. I was just a few months old when my mom brought me to my first concert of dad's bands, so I practically grew up around music right from the start. I used to love handing out concert programs for my dad when I was older and watching all of the young people do their thing. Since I was homeschooled and had educational flexibility, I even got to go with mom to watch dad's bands compete and perform in various band festivals around the community. Those were some really cool memories.   

Of all the kids who came through his band room in those years, a few have stood out to me. Andreas was one of them. He was a clarinet player who just seemed to have music flowing inside of him. That beat-up apartment building was home to him, and he came from an equally broken family. His clarinet was a cheap, student model instrument and my dad always wished there was some way he could upgrade that kid's instrument. Because the truth was, he could make that little cheap clarinet sing like nobody's business. Andreas just felt the music. There was melody in that kid's bones. And I always wondered if music was his only escape. 

He came to my dad at school one day and told him that he'd been working on a piece of music all by himself. It wasn't a school assignment; he just wanted to teach himself how to play it. The piece? The Adagio from Mozart's famous Clarinet Concerto in A Major. This is one of the premier clarinet pieces out there and somehow, this kid who lived in a run-down apartment had learned how to play it. My dad listened to him play it for him and was so impressed, he asked Andreas to do it as a solo at the next band concert. 

I recall sitting there listening as he began to play. I still can hear that sweet sound coming out of his instrument and the hush that fell over the audience as he played. One could have heard a pin drop by the time the piece was ending and the applause for him when he finished was deafening. Most didn't know the story but for those of us who did, it was a sign of triumph. Last I heard a couple years later, circumstances in his broken family hadn't allowed him to go on with music as he'd perhaps hoped. Definitely a shame. Maybe later he was able to finally fulfill that dream. It's been probably close to twenty years since that moment and I have no idea where Andreas ended up in his life. But that image of beautiful music rising from the worst situation has never left me all this time. 

I was just reading something the other day from a mentor of mine about how perspective is a choice. We get to decide what we do with our circumstances and our attitude. Andreas didn't choose the dynamics he found himself in. But he chose what to do with them and his decision was to make music. To birth a song of hope in the ashes. Maybe our present situations don't involve the same life circumstances as did his but perhaps our choice is still the same: will we make our own music in the mess? After all, look at how many Psalms in the Bible were written by a warrior-king who was on the run for fifteen years, awaiting his ascent to the throne. He chose to compose broken-praise in the face of his troubles, and so can we. 

When I look at that old apartment every time I go through that part of the city, I always think of Andreas. Because sometimes the sweetest song is born from the greatest sorrow. 

* And perhaps, if you have a moment, go listen to Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major in Andreas' honor. I think he would appreciate it.